The Berenstain Bears and the Real Easter Eggs: We Own It Because It Says Easter on the Front

We have this book in the collection probably because it had the word Easter on the front. When you're buying books for kids, you end up with your Halloween books and your Christmas books and your Valentine's books, and at some point somebody notices there's no Easter book, and now we have this one. Will we pull it out on Easter? Probably. But as I keep working through my Berenstain Bears marathon, this is not one of the better ones, and it's definitely one of the more forgettable ones in the collection.

First thing to know: this is one of the longer Berenstain Bears books. That last reading clocked in at about 10 minutes and 30 seconds, which is a lot of text. And unlike a lot of other Berenstain Bears books, a lot of it is filler, especially at the beginning.

The Opening Rhyme

It's a decent rhyme even if the first part doesn't make any sense. The last part definitely hits though.

A long walk to the egg hunt

The book opens with Sister counting out the 23 valentines she got at school, and then Mama getting a little preachy about how that's not all holidays are about; Thanksgiving is about being thankful, Christmas is about goodwill, Valentine's Day is about love and friendship. It's a pretty long opening for a book with Easter in the title. Sister's response is to go look at the calendar, skip past February and March, and land on Easter in April, which at least is the correct instinct for getting this story moving.

The Title Page

The bears all cheering the start of the Easter Egg Hunt while in the foreground we see some birds in a nest. This actually fits the book really well and is well done.

Except it doesn't get moving. Instead we get this weird transitionary part of the book during the winter, where the cubs forget about Easter and go sledding and make forts, with subtle undertones of spring coming. That takes up about three full pages, a couple of minutes of reading, and there doesn't really seem to be a point to it. With my kids in particular, trying to keep them engaged, I would definitely lose them during these parts, and I almost feel the need to skip over them. It's not necessarily bad writing, and I see what they're trying to do; the closing is going to be all about new life from spring, so they're setting that down early. But it seems like they either should have cold opened on the springtime stuff and skipped the whole Valentine's Day business, or scrapped the springtime theme and gone directly into Easter. Instead we get both, and the book meanders.

A long detour in the book where for some reason we get to see the cubs make snow angels. If my kids hadn't already lost interest by this point, they'd wonder what is going on.

Eventually the cubs see the billboard for the giant Beartown Easter egg hunt, with the prizes on display in the window of the general store, and run home to tell Mama. Mama spends the whole scene being entirely dismissive, ignoring Sister and trying to talk about her crocuses and her forsythia bush. We can see what she's doing; I think we've all used that parenting style before, the redirecting to the topic you'd like to talk about. But in this case she could easily just say "an Easter egg hunt, that sounds fun, let's get it on the schedule," and then springtime, springtime, springtime. Between this and outright telling Sister she's wrong about what holidays mean, Mama comes across a little overbearing in this one.

Papa is typical Papa, and honestly one of the highlights of the book for me is the image of him running around the corner of the house with Brother, all excited to tell Mama about the Easter egg hunt, apparently thinking he's going to get to do it. We fall into the stupid-Papa-bear trope a little here. Does he legitimately believe he's going to be in an Easter egg hunt, or is this a show he's putting on to get the kids excited? I've definitely played that role as the dad before, the "oh, do I get to do it too?" bit, mostly so the kids can tell me no, dad, this is for kids. He likes his black jelly beans, a very parent thing to do, and the cubs hand them over at the end, so his story arc resolves better than anyone else's.

The highlight for me. Good running form from Papa here.

The hunt itself goes fine until Brother and Sister find a robin's nest in the bushes at the edge of the square, watch the eggs hatch, and miss most of the egg hunt. Every cub gets a prize anyway, and we're told the wonder of Easter and its message of new life will stay with them forever.

So what's the lesson supposed to be?

They're clearly wanting kids to appreciate the other aspects of holidays, and it's a pretty typical thing for kids to just look forward to the yummy food on Thanksgiving or presents on Christmas or candy on Easter. But the execution is off the mark, because the bigger theme here ends up being spring and how spring brings new life, and the connection to Easter is soft. Easter is a religious holiday and there's really no mention of that at all. My guess is they're trying to thread the needle, not being too overtly religious, and focusing on the new-life angle instead. I see where they're coming from. But compared to other Berenstain Bears books where the moral is clear and there's a real resolution, this one just has the cubs, out of nowhere, developing a new appreciation for springtime. They never come to any reckoning that holidays are about more than the candy, which was supposedly the point of that whole Valentine's opening.

Mama's approach doesn't help. She's trying to show Sister what it's all about with the crocuses and the bush, but a kid is not going to land that message. It's a flower, whatever. She'd probably do better teaching the lesson a little more directly. So what does a kid walk away with here? Maybe some appreciation for the new life spring brings, and somehow that's tied to Easter. I don't know. It's not a one out of five, because there is a moral in there that we as parents want kids to have; I think there's even a Berenstain book called The Joy of Giving that handles the there's-more-to-a-holiday idea more cleanly. We'll get to the books that actually find the one-out-of-five rating later in the marathon.

Those half-open eyes

This is one of the later books in the series that we own, and one trend I've noticed in the later ones is that the cubs got some new faces. In particular there's this look where the eyes are heavy-lidded, half open. I think what they're going for is warmth, wholesomeness, the recognition of something good. It just doesn't look very good to me. When you look at those cubs' eyes, they almost look drugged out, this weird out-of-it look, and if a person gave you those eyes in real life you'd be a little creeped out. They use it a lot in this book, especially when the cubs are watching the baby birds hatch, and Mama gets a version of it too, an all-knowing look aimed at the cubs. Facial expressions are usually where the Berenstain Bears shine, telling you exactly what everyone is thinking, and technically this is doing that. It's just not an appealing look, and it's not a look you actually get from kids. Maybe from an adult.

Do these eyes freak anybody else out? They started introducing them in a lot of the later books and I am not a fan.

We do get some nice images of candy, which is typical for the series; whenever they illustrate candy, they make it extremely appealing. For my kids, the two lasting images from this book are probably the gigantic chocolate bunny they can imagine themselves winning, and the cubs holding their baskets at the egg hunt, which had mine immediately wanting to go look for eggs themselves.

Aaaand this brought both of my kids' attention back on the book. "Do chocolate bunnies that big really exist?" asked my daughter. "I hope it's not hollow like the Easter bunnies we get," followed my son.

Beyond that, there are no new characters introduced, and we're just taken along with the typical background scenery. Nothing stands out as a page the kids love, or that I love, or that's funny. Some facial expressions I don't like and some appealing candy, and that's the illustrations.

Where it lands

It's a milquetoast book. The plot meanders, but mostly it's just dull: cubs want to do an Easter egg hunt, cubs do the Easter egg hunt, cubs see something nice, and all of a sudden they have a new appreciation for the holiday, I suppose. There's nothing lasting here. I could read this book and immediately forget what it's about, my kids would probably forget what it's about, and it's never going to be one they explicitly ask for. It'll come off the shelf once a year in April, because it says Easter on it, and that's about the extent of its job in this house.